


And In the Tower He Saw

by Nemonus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, because Servants of the Empire, post-TFA recovery with Servants of the Empire parallels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:38:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6989311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a story about a boy who went into a tower. He found something he shouldn’t have found, and when he came out he was different. When his friends came out they were different. Finn rolled over and felt like he was dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And In the Tower He Saw

He woke up.  
  
Before, there had been a story about a boy who went into a tower. The stormtroopers told it less like a parable and more like an entertainment, although it had come from the days of the Empire; it was easy to propagandize if you thought about the events instead of the words. The words, though, didn’t quite fit, and their mismatching evoked a kind of illegal thrill that kept troopers awake and shouting, bickering over the story, imprinting on it.  
  
His squad needed to be berated out of their bunks after that, so Finn swung his legs over the thin side and stopped, the frame of the bed digging into the back of his knees, while his spine told him he was dying of some kind of poisoning.  
  
He put his head on his knees and clenched his teeth while the room spun. Brown walls, cracked and dusty - a room for punishment, or one which needed to be scrubbed, and maybe both conclusions were the same one. He’d been up too late. He had been laughing, telling that story, and Slip had been looking at him, fond and jealous.  
  
He folded himself back onto the bed. The medics had him laying on his back, but trying that now just highlighted a stripe of pain, an urgent nerve-message from the thick burning at his shoulders to that poison ache at the small of his back, so he curled onto his left side and listened for someone to come in and tell him to stand at attention. At best, he’d roll onto his back, but if he did that he could straighten his shoulders.  
  
Slip had warned him. “You won’t wake up if you tell this story all night. Phasma will know,” but Finn was brash and full of the story, and he did not listen.  
  
The boy went into the tower and found something he shouldn’t have found, and when he came out he was different. When his friends came out they were different.  
  
White sheet, gray-brown floor, a smell that might be this planet’s mold. Finn tucked his hands under his chin and discovered that moving his shoulders hurt too.  
  
By the time someone entered the room, his eyes were closed.  
  
_Don’t fake it, Finn. Own up to your sleeplessness._ It was important that your team knew you owned up to things. His team had spread out around him to make a do-not-cross message clear as an aurek. In one of the training missions, FN-2187 had known that he was meant to be in the First Order. With each step across the silver floor came a strange clarity, a hyper-sobriety which made the footfalls each part of a walk across the sky. The next day was a precipice. Phasma’s regard was a precipice too, but FN-2187 raised a blaster as balanced and engineered as he was, and knew he would be an officer one day. He daydreamed the papers in front of him, his team like an aurek.  
  
When someone touched the head of his bed, Finn flinched and opened gummed eyes.  
  
_Kalonia._ The Resistance doctor wore a major chevron on the breast of her uniform, and as Finn looked up at her he remembered that the Resistance didn’t use names as their rank blazes.  
  
He said, “I’m sorry.”  
  
Kalonia was adjusting something at the head of the bed, something Finn didn’t want to move his back to see.  
  
“I lied. I’m sorry.”  
  
Doctor Kalonia didn’t let her concern show. Finn was used to med droids, so part of him had expected her to be inefficient, talkative, any number of things that had been framed as weakness by the First Order. She was not, but her expression softened. “What’s that, Finn?”  
  
“I answered to Finn. I never used to do that.” He spoke slowly, unsettled by the taste in his mouth.  
  
“That isn’t a lie if it’s what you want to be called.”  
  
“But if Phasma learns …”  
  
Kalonia frowned, her eyes narrowing. Her hair was graying, Finn noticed, the strands bunched up under the black hair cupped around the side of her face.  
  
She said, “Phasma isn’t a commander here.”  
  
In the story, the boy had gone into the tower to find out a terrible secret. He had been a rebel, brutish and delusional, but desperately strong in his delusion. He had stormed the tower alone. (The cadets had been taught that they might need to storm towers on their own.) He had been cured in the end, though, captured by the Empire and subjected to the kind of reconditioning that had been available to them in those times. The cadets had admired and villainized the boy.  
  
Finn said, “What happened?”  
  
“You were hit by a lightsaber. Do you remember that?”  
  
He did. “We were on Starkiller Base. We ran, after Han … wait.” In trying to sit up he only curled around himself again, the ache berating his back and other aches starting to flare. “Where’s Rey? Where’s Poe?”  
  
“They are all right.” Kalonia retreated a few steps from him, to give him space to breathe or to keep out of the way. “Poe is here. Rey went to find Luke Skywalker.”  
  
Relief, although it almost made the pain worse. A moment ago, Finn had been ready to storm a tower alone. “What happened to Kylo Ren?”  
  
Kalonia sighed. “We aren’t entirely sure. We think he may have been on Starkiller Base when it was destroyed.”  
  
That was the roster, then. He went through the usual motions, but they had been painful for a while now: Slip, dead, Nines, dead, Zeroes, unknown. Finn cursed, and Kalonia nodded in solemn agreement. Phasma, trash compactor. At least that made Finn smile.  
  
"How long will I be out of commission?”  
  
“We aren’t quite sure. You were hit twice, but the back is the worst. Surface wound, but a bad burn. You’ve been in and out of bacta.”  
  
“Am I ... am I scheduled to go in again?”  
  
“If you stay awake and we have the supplies, that’s up to you. Is the pain bad enough for it?”

  “No, ma’am.”  
  
“I had a feeling you’d say that.” Her expression was, for a brief moment, inexplicably suspicious. She glanced at the bed again. “There’s a comm in the wall if you need anything. If the wiring doesn’t work today, just yell. I’ll leave the door open.”  
  
The instructions, delivered in her patient, clever voice, were hypnotic and full. Finn found his eyes drifting closed again, his dominant impression of the world the feeling of his own hand against his mouth.  
  
Hours later, Maz brought him a tree. Sat it at the foot of the bed like it belonged there. It was about the size of her, blue, or foggily glowing, and green underneath. Maz patted Finn’s hand, and he craned his neck so he wouldn’t disturb the poultices on his back. The pain was mostly gone, and the boredom had replaced it.  
  
Maz said, “This is a cutting.”  
  
There had been a story about a woman who saw visions. He was in that story now, he supposed; medbay and reconditioning shared a wall, and strange things happened to troopers for whom the treatment didn’t quite take. One of those things was probably happening to him now, as he saw Maz Kanata’s form shift and move like a tree in the wind; first a girl, then Phasma unmasked, then Slip bleeding with a blaster shot in his chest and three bloody claw marks in the skin of his cheek.  
  
Finn said, “Hmn?”  
  
Maz shuffled forward so that she could see him over the side of the bed. Finn had rolled onto his side again, to take his weight off his back and so that he could see the door.  
  
"It was taken from a larger whole so that it might grow. You have been having dreams.”  
  
“Yeah. How do you know?”  
  
“You were almost dead. Listen. Leia sent me to bring this to you. She felt it might help to heal you. It might. But sometimes listening to a friendly voice can do the same. Do you want mine?”  
  
Astonished and humbled, Finn nodded and straightened his back as best he could. Maz waved away any concern for decorum as she dragged a stool from near the end of the bed and climbed the rungs. Maz the collector, Maz the informant, Maz the giver of weapons.  
  
“If it’s all the same to you, that would be nice, but I might go to sleep.”  
  
Maz blinked huge eyes behind gleaming goggles. “It is all the same. What do you dream?”  
  
Finn looked down at the bedclothes. “There was this story.”  
  
“There are usually stories.”  
  
He saw his squad as they had been; fierce and loyal and incredibly young. How had they taken that last step? How had they raised blasters against innocent people? How had _Kylo Ren_? How could Finn _not_ put down roots here, in the grubby rooms of the Resistance?  
  
“I’m so sorry.”  
  
Maz patted his hand. Her scales were warmer than he had expected, the orange skin almost glowing with the impression of the veins underneath.  
  
“You come here, you see strange things. Things that you desire, things that scare you.”  
  
“In this story, there was a girl caught in a tower. She …”  
  
The light from the tree was turning the sheets blue like bacta. In front of him, flowers grew out of the joints of white armor.  
  
“…she was trapped in the tower.”  
  
Maz nodded. His impression of her was bleary and kaleidoscopic with sleep, but not with the poison fog of the pain. Once, he had hefted a blaster in a simulation. He had crouched behind pop-up walls and scouted, and his team had worked hard, they had ( _I’m sorry_ ) but they had not been able to fell all of the faceless holographic enemies in front of them. Finn had been pinned down, watching Slip’s hand go limp and hearing Nines complain over their squad channel while he dutifully played dead.  
  
Finn had run out of charge, had been about to toss the blaster away and weave sideways to circle around and go after the enemy with his fists, when Phasma had leaned down through the simulation. She handed him her blaster, the silver gun with the folded scope, then turned away while the hologram rippled. His hands were almost big enough to be comfortable slotting the extender into place.  
  
He finished the mission with Phasma’s blaster, storming around the enemy’s barricades after the long-range fire made a few raise their heads.  
  
In the story, there was a girl caught in the tower. She broke out. Her hands never touched the stone.  
  
“Is there any more?” Maz asked, but her tone was forgiving. Finn felt sleep lay on him like a blanket.  
  
Once there was a boy who walked into a tower. The boy went into the tower and found something he shouldn’t have found, and when he came out he was different. When his friends came out they were different. The way some people told it, he had been left with the sickness of rebellion in him. The way some told it, the girl escaped.  
 


End file.
